Suggestion: Mechanism to stop macros / bots in Instances (Mayhem)

DonJunior

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2022-03-05 19:03 Entropia Universe Support:

Hi Theocles,

Thank you for your report.

Using macros and other software to automate ones gameplay is not allowed and for players who use these there are consequences.

This recent support case shows that using macros and bots is cheating and violates Mindark's ToU.

Therefore, before Summer Mayhem I suggest that Mindark implements a mechanism to combat macros and bots.

Surely the playerbase will support such a mechanism, as we should not have players breaking Mindark's rules.
 
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Corrected it for them.

2022-03-05 19:03 Entropia Universe Support:

Hi Theocles,

Thank you for your report.

Using macros and other software to automate ones gameplay is not allowed and for players who use these there are consequences. Unless your name is XXX then you can do what you want.
 
Corrected it for them.

Using macros and other software to automate ones gameplay is not allowed and for players who use these there are consequences. Unless your name is XXX then you can do what you want.

Hopefully Mindark will 'step up to the plate' and not 'turn a blind eye' to this ongoing abuse. Sure it may impact revenue, but they have clearly stated it against their rules and it will increase trust in the platform if they are seen to do something about macro/bot abuse. As your tongue in cheek reply indicates, there is a trust issue when it appears that 'XXX' player "can do what they want". In a real cash economy it is not a good thing if there is the perception that ongoing abuse of the rules is ignored.
 
In a real cash economy it is not a good thing if there is the perception that ongoing abuse of the rules is ignored.

It's also VERY bad getting banned if the company thought u used macro / bots in a RCE when u didn't
 
Hopefully Mindark will 'step up to the plate' and not 'turn a blind eye' to this ongoing abuse. Sure it may impact revenue, but they have clearly stated it against their rules and it will increase trust in the platform if they are seen to do something about macro/bot abuse. As your tongue in cheek reply indicates, there is a trust issue when it appears that 'XXX' player "can do what they want". In a real cash economy it is not a good thing if there is the perception that ongoing abuse of the rules is ignored.

Exactly. In my opinion they need to change from grind grind grind, to more active gameplay.

There is still videos on twitch where a streamer, during last mayhem says

"I'm just going to get some food" .
Turns macro on. (Was clearly a macro)
30-45mins later they come back.
The video is still on twitch. This same streamer does it on multi other occasions.

Just go sandking/wait for migration. You'll see some lovely macro plays
 
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Therefore, before Summer mayhem I request Mindark to implement a mechanism to combat macros/bots, a simple random popup that needs to be clicked (could contain a simple puzzle) which takes 1-5 seconds to complete, and pops up once every 20-30mins.

holy shit i will fucking quit this game so fucking fast.


a better solution is to just rollback the f-to-win patch from 2018
 
In a real cash economy it is not a good thing if there is the perception that ongoing abuse of the rules is ignored.

It's also VERY bad getting banned if the company thought u used macro / bots in a RCE when u didn't

Exactly, it is why I suggested the solution was not analyzing who is using a macro or bot, but making their usage far harder.
 
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The best change they can do is make it so you have to manually click the mob to target it and then press f to auto use or make a whole new mob system in UE5 that uses telegraphs to display some attacks and if you don't avoid it, they do 200%+ dmg.
 
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The above recent support case response shows that using macros and bots is cheating and violates Mindark's ToU.

Obviously finding which players are using macros/bots is not working because the general player consensus is their usage is widespread.

Therefore, before Summer mayhem I request Mindark to implement a mechanism to combat macros/bots, a simple random popup that needs to be clicked (could contain a simple puzzle) which takes 1-5 seconds to complete, and pops up once every 20-30mins.

Surely the playerbase will support such a mechanism, as we should not have players breaking Mindark's rules that are profiting huge sums of money from Instance events like Mayhem.


MA has many adequate tools with which it can determine the actions of a player with great accuracy!

The best example in this case, which I can give from a personal example after checking, is the increase in the collision of the target in real time of a particular mob.


1-the-best-Mob.jpg


* The picture is divided into two parts and in the 1st example it is in an ordinary situation, as a result of which you will find the goal closest to you.
* In the second case, the collision of the mob is increased, and because the player is in it, the most distant mob becomes the closest target.


1. In case the player uses an AFK clicker, the most likely consequence will be a stuck for a long time.... but if he is a player carelessly pressing the interaction button, he would be fine in a few seconds.

2. Using a bot program that makes decisions based on RAM memory is usually instantaneous compared to normal human choice.


It is not necessary for the MA to applies these checks to every player. It is enough to be applied by a responsible person, only in cases of excessive dedication to the game.

In this case, when I personally went through these checks and from what you understand from the public opinion about the use of Macros... do you think that MA applies these tools to top players with 1 million monthly turnover?




PPRPS...
Personally, I think that interact is a very good tool in the game, because it gives convenience to older players with slower actions, compared to these ambitious 20-year-olds players... but his exploit at the moment is excessive. We just need adequate action, regardless of the player's bankroll.
 
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Therefore, before Summer mayhem I request Mindark to implement a mechanism to combat macros/bots, a simple random popup that needs to be clicked (could contain a simple puzzle) which takes 1-5 seconds to complete, and pops up once every 20-30mins.
This is Entropia Universe. A simple capcha simply will not do.

Make it so every 20-30 minutes you have to TP somewhere, talk to an npc, do a small side mission, and if you don't talk to that npc in x amount of minutes after the timer pops up you get logged out, unable to log back in for 2 hours.

Make it so these side missions give you some sort of bonus. I'd like to suggest they do away with the automatic skill gain thing that happens nearly hourly and instead do something like listed above and the reward is a tradeable or soulbound skill gain pill so you won't waste the skill gain bonus when it just pops up after you've played an hour or two and it's now 3 am in the morning and you need to get to best due to real life.
 
Implemented broadly across the board, this might be a bit too burdensome to impose on ordinary gameplay. However, it might be the start of an interesting idea. Here is my proposal:

  • Remove the rule against kill stealing.
  • If Player A has put a few shots into a non-Shared-Loot mob and Player B attacks it, Player A gets a puzzle (that is difficult for bots to solve). If Player A completes the puzzle, then he or she claims the mob, and is entitled to its loot even if Player B deals the most damage to it. If Player A does not complete the puzzle, then the loot goes to the player who deals the most damage to the mob, as usual.
  • Move Mayhem and other important events out of instances and back onto Calypso, as they once were, creating new land mass as needed for the spawns. If desired, allow other planet partners to spawn event mobs on their planets as well, to make choice of terrain part of one's event strategy.

This should produce the following effects, both in and out of Mayhem:

  • It becomes extremely profitable to repeatedly kill steal an unattended bot, but extremely expensive to do to a human player.
  • The human player being kill stolen gets heavily compensated for the inconvenience via free damage, and probably achieves TT profit as a result.
  • In practice, being skill stolen as a human would likely be at least as rare as being killed while hunting in non-lootable PVP, due to the steep cost to the kill stealer.
  • The unattended bot is at great risk of losing a fortune, providing incentive not to bot, or at least to be very attentive to the bot and not run it 24/7.

I don't claim that this is a complete solution, but it might help without much collateral damage.
 
Therefore, before Summer mayhem I request Mindark to implement a mechanism to combat macros/bots, a simple random popup that needs to be clicked (could contain a simple puzzle) which takes 1-5 seconds to complete, and pops up once every 20-30mins.


lol did you actually just suggest a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA inside the game?


No wait, not suggest.. sorry.. REQUEST?


I can think of a hundred better ways to discourage botting than a freaking captcha inside the game hahaha....
 
Isn't there a thing already built into many games to stop bots? I know very little about designing a game but do know when I tried to play another game recently it wouldn't let me till I turned off the software controlling the lights on my keyboard and gpu. Some sort of anti-cheat thingy.

That being said the amount of people who have trouble installing and opening the game, if something like that were added I presume it would cause even more issues!
 
They can detect auto-hunters easily if they wanted to, there's server based tools that can read patterns, but they don't seem to care too much at this point unless there's too many complaints against one person, then they may or may not do something... like logging them off so they can log back in when they come back to their monitor a week later. Botting is basically an essential part of the game right now :cry: since even after so many complaints they clearly show that they don't care. Best we can hope for right now is so they introduce an ingame tool for autohunting and mining so that those who refuse to use botting software can benefit from that as well.
 
Isn't there a thing already built into many games to stop bots? I know very little about designing a game but do know when I tried to play another game recently it wouldn't let me till I turned off the software controlling the lights on my keyboard and gpu. Some sort of anti-cheat thingy.

That being said the amount of people who have trouble installing and opening the game, if something like that were added I presume it would cause even more issues!
They can detect auto-hunters easily if they wanted to, there's server based tools that can read patterns, but they don't seem to care too much at this point unless there's too many complaints against one person, then they may or may not do something... like logging them off so they can log back in when they come back to their monitor a week later. Botting is basically an essential part of the game right now :cry: since even after so many complaints they clearly show that they don't care. Best we can hope for right now is so they introduce an ingame tool for autohunting and mining so that those who refuse to use botting software can benefit from that as well.
Thankyou for your inputs. I have amended the OP to only request a mechanism to combat macros and bots, rather than to define that mechanism, as it is obvious there are better solutions than the one I suggested.
 
Thankyou for your inputs. I have ammended the OP to request a mechanism to combat macros and bots, rather than to define that mechanism, as it is obvious there are better solutions than the one I suggested.
Well, if they don't change their stance on automated gameplay, what else can be done? This can be partially solved by introducing interactive gameplay, like having to manually dodge an attack or mobs with weak spots that you have to manually aim for do deal a little bit of extra damage. This would level the playing field a little bit I imagine. Could this be possible with EU5? Probably.
 
You're asking them to fix a problem they created and are actively fostering as part of their primary revenue source.

The support cases are non-sense.
Pretty much this. Problem should be in air quotes here, really. "problem"

I always find the support case references to be confusing... as if they are supposed to mean anything.

Any CSR response to anything regarding the topic is irrelevant given that

1. The support faq page states that they CAN NOT
  • Provide legal advice or general interpretations of the user agreements and related policies.
2. There is literally nothing in the TOS regarding the use of macros or automating gameplay.

3. Entropia is legally classified as a skill-based game with dynamic loot. Any and all loot is paid for one way or another. Generally speaking people using macros are paying for the vast majority of loot received by the majority of players. I'm guessing most people don't see the correlation of rare items dropping on NI and the mob activity there :ROFLMAO: If they did they would be thanking [redacted names here] whenever they poach some rare loot instead of complaining about macroing/"botting".

smh. I don't know why I bother responding. This thread will pop up again next week with a new title.

btw, don't interpret this as a "pro-bot" post. I'll rejoice the day if/when they update their TOS with an anti-macro clause. I'll join a soc or create one with the intent of max gains and make sure you can never tier a 2.0 weapon again without grinding for a year (per tier) or paying an average cumulative 2000% MU. bet on that 🤑
 
Well MA basically designed the whole game around needing to mash F for 18 hours a day just to make any progress 😅 progress is slow and even a good tiered weapon might only get 1 ping in this amount of time! Not saying you should bot this, but being able to just press F makes it s hell of a lot manageable.
People are talking about MA completely scrapping the game dynamic. Not sure how many of us would be keen on that. For me, I like it the way it is as long as botters don't get in my way (which they do from time to time!! Although you can notice them and mess with them 😅)
 
.... I like it the way it is as long as botters don't get in my way (which they do from time to time!! Although you can notice them and mess with them 😅)
Yeah, if we are talking about things that actually ARE in the terms of service... if you are afk hunting in an area with limited (non-shared) spawns where you are guaranteed to ruin someone's ability to hunt due to your inability to control your targeting actions:

8. MindArk’s Rules of Conduct
c. You cannot interfere with any other Participants ability to use and enjoy the Entropia Universe.

then you should be expecting a warning -> suspension -> ban, imo.

flipside: if I walked up to someone at a spawn like chimera or myrinian (good example here) and fucked with them while there are multiple fields of them that support 100 hunters, I think that I would be the asshole here.

.. to be completely on topic with the OP about mayhem: the goal is to maximize universal cycle within the mayhem instance.. In Easter Annihilation I would've liked a ground reticle spawn underneath a player that indicated a missile strike or some form of EMP sent by the CDF. If stood in for x seconds: the player deals 20% less damage and takes 20% more damage for 3 minutes. Alternatively, if a robot (or robots) were pulled into it, it would get a debuff causing it to take 20% more damage. This has dpp implications to encourage active play and penalize afk play in the most profitable area in the game.

Something like that is a solution that has more impact than people like OP realize, imo. Definitely no captchas.

Asking for anything more while using cryengine while UE5 is being worked on is a waste of time.

P.S.

to everyone chilling in the moloch depths:

ty for your contributions to the AG pool

my greece shares thank you :bowdown:
 
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If Player A has put a few shots into a non-Shared-Loot mob and Player B attacks it, Player A gets a puzzle (that is difficult for bots to solve). If Player A completes the puzzle, then he or she claims the mob, and is entitled to its loot even if Player B deals the most damage to it. If Player A does not complete the puzzle, then the loot goes to the player who deals the most damage to the mob, as usual.
I think this is one of the best suggestions in a long time, as it has a degree of complexity, but is still easy to programme.

However, over so many years it seems to me that MA have introduced features intentionally geared to providing an advantage to those with the best knowledge, maybe not learned by certain players, or even learnable at all, but 'fed' with info in an insiderish sort of way (buddies!).

I get the feeling that "auto-play" features are here to stay. At best, MA will "help" level the playing field only by helping non-botters achieve similar turnover speeds manually, or help for everybody to find afk activities doable with keyboard macros or not even that.
 
1. all actions that are Human performed can be automated. (LF Lost ark epic fail on www to see what is a bot ruled game)
2. The more you shot, the more TT loss happen (it is called profit for the company, just to understand)
3. i made a poll 70% of ppl either dont care or think that F mashing should be automated in the client.

the idea of a Captcha is a facepalm... while my pill run, mob is killing me and i need to FAP a friggin picture asking please check the street lights happens...
moreover? disturbing ppl while they enjoy their free time (paid several dollar per hour? ) as an example Weird ppl being self promoted to "entropia policemen" stalkerize player asking "are you there"? proper answer would be "yeah, i am here with yr mom, no worries she comes soon"

please.... ask logitech to remove 612 keyboard series from catalogue, autoit and autohotkey to retire the software and MA to default...

remember that they need 25m ped to run operations and at 98% return it is at 2% margin...
1.250.000.000 ped per year cycled,
3.424.000 per day ,
142.600 per hour
please do it pressing a captcha once and then....
 
a side note on Kill stealing... way easyer that all teh cumbersome idea of a puzzle... some mob are 3 shot...
1. engage shot locks the monster to the tagger, all other see it as "Unreachable"
2. mosnter is released if tagger dies or monster diesl
no more whining on "lost ped for a rubio 1 pec shot lost from some "put your definition here" player

alternatively, make all mosnter shared (bad marketing, would anonimize the global ticker that many ppl read (mine is set to 2k minimum so i minimize flash on the screen)
 
a side note on Kill stealing... way easyer that all teh cumbersome idea of a puzzle... some mob are 3 shot...
1. engage shot locks the monster to the tagger, all other see it as "Unreachable"
2. mosnter is released if tagger dies or monster diesl
no more whining on "lost ped for a rubio 1 pec shot lost from some "put your definition here" player

alternatively, make all mosnter shared (bad marketing, would anonimize the global ticker that many ppl read (mine is set to 2k minimum so i minimize flash on the screen)
I do like the unreachable status idea!!
 
MA changed the game so that it is easier to bot.

-instances
-autoloot
-lifesteal
-press F to interact

Do you really believe they are now going to change anything when it benefits them? 🙂
 
While I agree that botting should be stopped, I am not sure given MAs history of minor changes affecting unforeseen and unrelated things in game, that this would go as planned.
Do we seriously expect them to program well enough to differentiate between an afk hunter, and a crafter or space traveller, who is constantly doing the same action for an hour or many hours. I would be terrified I could be logged out or even banned for crafting or flying in space or just standing chatting using an MA provided dance step. Anyone remember avatars with metre long fingers, floaters in space that MA and others had to rescue. I am sure many of you can think of more extreme examples where small changes have gone awry.
Be careful what you wish for !!

Also those of you who are full on gamers may not realise the need for some to briefly afk in any situation. Sometimes minutes may turn into something much longer. It is unfortunate if it affects another, but for Carers, RL will take priority and they may not always have time or remember to switch an action off. Far better would be to actually put live support to some use. A report of a botter to live support should be followed by them immediately going and investigating
Where it is clearly a bot they should then have the ability to temp ban pending further investigation and or perma ban.
Saw a sweat bot on Ark some time ago, that died and revived multiple times and returned to his mob using exactly the same route each time, if someone or something placed in his way he would bounce off it. He was reported, an employee of either Ark or MA (can't remember which) came and observed for 10 mins, then suddenly the avatar was gone, and never seen again. It doesn't need complex programming it needs policing, and actions other than 'I have passed your report to support team', If ever there was an avatar that could be a bot...live support would qualify most days.
 
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